David Emm Highlights Three Malware, Most Powerful

According to Senior Technology Expert David Emm of Kaspersky Labs, malware history became pronounced when three malicious programs Stuxnet, Concept and Michelangelo impacted strikingly on the e-threat landscape; reported infosecurity-magazine.com dated July 27, 2012.

Emm notes that during 1992, the PC-virus that first drew the attention of media in a massive scale was Michelangelo. This virus affected the boot sector while contaminated systems via floppy disks.

Emm further observes that serious predictions were made regarding how and what impact would occur from the March 6-triggerred Michelangelo on different countries. The given date marks Michelangelo's death anniversary. Evidently, the general attention the Michelangelo virus drew indeed reflected an enormous shift, adds David Emm.

Meanwhile, following Michelangelo, during July 1995, Concept a macro virus appeared without a precedent. Such viruses reportedly moved on as being the dominant threat during the next 4-yrs.

To make work, the Concept's creator took advantage of users when they sent and received data that was much more frequent in comparison to programs. Moreover, by utilizing WordBasic6, Concept's author issued commands for altering NORMAL.DOT a template in order to include the virus' malicious script like many auto macros inside every document that the user subsequently crafted. Consequently, when other users got the virus contaminated documents they too became infected. Ant-virus researchers, who since-long forecasted this ordinary phenomenon as well as became alarmed, found far-reaching implications ensuing.

Foremost of all, people writing the virus moved their attention from disk sectors and program files (both executable codes) to data. In addition to this, macro viruses unlike any earlier virus intentionally targeted and contaminated data files. Lastly, while not being either OS-specific or platform-specific, macro viruses were essentially software-specific.

Eventually, in 2010, Emm specified Stuxnet as putting spotlight on malicious software. The virus disseminated via Microsoft Windows PCs while attacked the industrial control machines of Siemens as well as facilitated the control of an Iranian enrichment plant for nuclear fuel.

The Security Expert judges that Stuxnet was pronounced in making a move away towards targeted malware assaults witnessed during 2010-11 when it created a revolution in the scenario of personalized attacks.